Month: January 2019

So my favorite carpet suffered a tragedy. Which really isn’t a tragedy, but it took a day or two to get to that place.

Our dog has had chronic allergies ever since moving to Abu Dhabi and we started him on a course of medicine that made him sick. He threw up on Carter’s small rug (thankfully) that has already suffered a series of injustices over the years, so I dragged it outside to hose it off. He also threw up on one of my big carpets, but I was able to blot it and clean it in place.

An hour later, while I was at the gym, the dog got sick again on one of my bigger carpets and the boys, thinking they were being helpful, took it outside and hosed it off to try and clean it. Well this particular gorgeous carpet is the type that isn’t colorfast so the red dye ran everywhere — turning all of the beautiful white detailing into a rusty, muddy mess.

I came home and freaked out and ranted about how two people who can’t even be bothered to pick a wet towel up off the floor or put dishes in the dishwasher decided they would wrestle a big rug outside and hose it off and why couldn’t they start by being helpful with the things I’ve actually asked them to do instead of ignoring me all the time . . . and on and on . . . and a little more. I almost cried (for those who know me in person, that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse).

For context of my pain, it’s the carpet that makes up the background of this blog — my most recent acquisition from Bahrain, a beloved Qashqai. I fell in love with this carpet long distance the moment I spotted a corner of it under a pile of rugs in a photograph that Josh sent to me.

I let my baby dry overnight, hoping that daylight and drying out would make everything look better, but no. The damage has been done. There’s a whole process of removing color run from a carpet, but it has to be done with chemicals and by professionals and it’s not my style. I have my things to be used and enjoyed and not to fuss over so I decided to leave it and just be sad about it. I knew I’d get over it eventually.

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The damage is only on one end of the carpet, but that means I get to be reminded of exactly how different it looks every time I see it. Blah, blah . . . woe is me.

And then I went to church the following morning and the sermon was about eternity. And how our lives here, even if we live to be 100, are only a dot on a timeline that would wrap around the globe 1000 times, just as a starting point. And this short period of time pales in significance to the time we will spend in eternity with God, or eternity in Hell, without God. And my water damaged rug suddenly shrunk in importance as I was reminded that this rug is only a dot in the span of my life, which is an even tinier dot in the span of eternity. And 100 years from now it won’t matter that today my carpet is patchy orange on one end — it barely matters now.

So now when I look at my carpet I am reminded that life is short and I can smile. I love having a visible reminder that my focus on earth should be God and his glory for eternity. That makes my rug priceless in an entirely different way.

2018 was hard. We made it to the end of the year, barely hobbling over the finish line. In the big picture, we are fine: we are all healthy, employed, and love each other, but the day to day has been a struggle.

I feel disconnected from the kids because we’re all so tired that when we are together we are a string of individuals on our own devices, with our headphones on, each consuming our preferred brain stimulus. Camille has old episodes of Full House running on a loop, Caleb watches YouTube videos of other people playing video games (I didn’t think there could be a rung below gaming on the intellectual ladder, but he found it), Carter has sports highlights on his laptop while playing something else on his phone, and I’ve got reruns of my favorite comedy series playing (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Rec, and The Office) for the 50th time because I don’t have the mental energy to learn a whole new cast of characters.

So why did 2018 kick our behinds? I think it was the wave after wave of unknowns, interspersed with crashes onto the rocks. Winter/Spring 2018 was a bundle of nerves as we anticipated retirement. Stuck in limbo between one job and needing the timing to work out just perfectly to get into the next one . . . looking back I’m amazed that we actually pulled it off. All those moving parts of packing up the house, kenneling the pets, having friends store appliances in their spare rooms over the summer, selling my car and having it stored in a hotel parking garage, getting employed, all of those cogs ended up fitting together and it worked.

But between there and here we rode the craziest rollercoaster and took a lot of unexpected twists and turns. And I’m wondering if 2019 is going to be another loop around a similar track?

We’re still waiting to hear what the future holds for Josh’s job. Today there were 4 different options that popped up, but who knows if any of them are actually possible or will actually exist in a few months. We have to see how the puzzle pieces fit together in the merger and then move from there. It feels like a game of leapfrog and we’re waiting to see how long we can stay on this lily pad until we have to leap to the next.

In the meantime, we’re trying to relax, recover, get more rest and spend more time together watching the same TV shows — hey, baby steps! Camille isn’t thrilled about most of HGTV, but she does like Chip and Joanna on Fixer Upper, whereas Carter much prefers the Property Brothers. We’ll figure it out, eventually.

This photo makes me smile because it’s a symbol of something easy in a life where so many of the daily processes are difficult.

For example, making a change to our internet/cable plan. First of all, there is the incomprehensible fact that in order to get the best price for internet you have to purchase a bundle that includes TV and phone. I’m not talking about a plan that gives a discount on each item for bundling, but it’s literally cheaper. Internet alone might be $150, but faster internet with phone and cable package is $130. I can’t even. It’s just the way things are here.

Josh figured out that we could get a faster connection for less money than we are currently paying, so he went through the process of updating our account. Except they can’t just change our package, we have to start a new plan, with a new account number, get that one installed and then cancel the old plan. And it has to be done at the end of the month because they don’t pro-rate days so if you cancel mid month, you lose the rest of the month that you’ve already paid for.

Sigh. So we jumped through the many hoops to get the new service set up at the right time and then when the installer finally came at 9pm (of course), he said they had put in the wrong order and he had the wrong equipment and I’d have to go into the store to place another order. Which of course would not work for us since we were at the end of the month and needed this set up so we could cancel our old plan before we were charged for another month.

After many phone calls back and forth between me, the installer, his supervisor, and Josh on speakerphone from Saudi they “did something” and was able to set it up and get it working that night. Of course. Usually you get the automatic “No” because it’s easier and makes it someone else’s problem, but pushing back works about 50% of the time.

Smooth sailing now, right? Nope, 2 weeks later they shut off our service without warning and it took 2 days of phone calls and visits to the office to get it started again. Why? I have no idea. Ridiculousness is normal here. I’ve been in a devilish dance with Etisalat since way back in December 2010 when we first landed in Egypt, so this is not new, but it gets really old.

And in classic form, they couldn’t just restart our TV and internet — no, they had to submit another order with a third account number and it took a manager working two phones to get someone to come set it up the next day instead of the first available appointment that was 3 days away. And of course, the installer brought another set of new equipment. Whatever buddy, let’s just get this working. Now I’ve got phones, routers, and DVR boxes  to spare. I’m almost ready to open an electronics resale shop on Dubizzle (Dubai’s version of Craigslist).

At the same time as our internet drama we were trying to get my bank account set up and my checks cashed from working at school. Every time I went to the bank there was an issue: computer is down, something is wrong with your school account, only one person working and 15 people waiting … the goal was to get my name on a local account so I wouldn’t have to wait with the masses each month to try and get cash.

But getting a joint account here is not all that easy. Some say it’s impossible, but I think that probably changes by the day. One day possible, the next day not possible. That’s normal for here. There’s a lot of weirdness related to gender roles and how much ownership of the account I actually have as a housewife and a dependent. Hopefully I won’t ever need to find out if this joint thing is real or a myth. Long tedious story short, we did it, but after it was all supposed to be completed I got a phone call saying that I had to come back in again because they had forgotten to have me sign another form. Ah yes. Nothing ever works the way it’s supposed to the first time.

As a final bit of icing on my crazy cake, every time I use my card Josh gets a text with the amount spent, the store name, and the remaining account balance. That would be great info to have if it went both ways, but no, he’s the only one to get notified of purchases. Oh well. It’s just the way it is here.

Coming full circle, when I walked into church this morning with my coffee in hand, sat down, and saw that there was a cup holder that perfectly fit my mug, I smiled because it was so unexpectedly easy. To finally have something that was seamless and without hassle was exactly what I needed. God bless and Amen.

Ringing in the new year with the entire family under one roof — not sure what next year will bring so we’re enjoying it while we can. We partied like Chartiers and spent the evening marathoning a survivalist show called Alone — people dropped in Patagonia (solo) with minimal gear, each trying to be the last one standing. We feasted on nachos and guacamole while watching people hardier than us subsist on dandelion greens and the (very) occasional fish. We ran up to the roof at midnight to watch 10 solid minutes of finale quality and quantity fireworks, and then right back to see if one of the adventurers was going to succumb to a spider bite infection (She didn’t. Herbs to the rescue!) We left off at 72 days into the adventure when they were coping with snow and 4 people still hanging on.

And we ended the year with a family photo shoot in the desert. Here’s to 2019.

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